by K. J. Parker
Eyvind shrugged. A man next to the boy said, “This is King Chauzida.”
“I thought—” Raffen stopped and shrugged. “That’s your business,” he said. “Right, why should you believe me? Well, because we’re lined up in front of you in an incredibly vulnerable position, if you attack us now we’re all dead. It’d take you about ten minutes. Also, it makes good sense. The empire’s finished, we both know that. Why should we fight for the losing side? That’s stupid.”
The boy considered that. “In that case,” he said, “why leave it to the last minute? Why didn’t you join us earlier?”
Raffen smiled. “Two reasons,” he said. “First, you’ll observe that your enemy is stuck out in the open, where you can butcher him easily. If I’d declared for you earlier, we’d now be sitting under Florian’s wall, wondering what the hell to do next, while their artillery shot rocks at us. Second, this way, the empire has just kitted out my entire army in body armour, helmets, shields and weapons, free, gratis and for nothing. Where I come from, only chieftains can afford this stuff. Does that answer your question?”
The boy was thinking about it. He clearly wasn’t going to be rushed. Smart kid. “All right,” he said. “I believe you. What do you want to do now?”
Raffen didn’t let the relief show. “Well,” he said, “if it’s all the same to you, I think we’d rather leave the actual fighting to your people. After all, it’s your war, not ours. We’ll just hang back here and watch.”
The boy frowned. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I think it’d be better if you came with us.”
Very smart kid. “If that’s what you want,” Raffen said. “Where would you like us?”
The boy looked sideways at an old man in a thick grey fur cloak, who said, “On the left, the river side. Stop them getting to the ford.”
“We can do that,” Raffen said.
“Actually,” the boy said, “what I meant was, what do you want to do after we’ve beaten the empire? I think we ought to sort it out now rather than later.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, please. I think it’s probably quite important.”
“Fine.” Raffen smiled. “How about this? We draw a line. Everything north and west of the Sanarois is ours, everything else is yours. Would that suit you?”
The men on either side of him were about to speak, but the boy said, “Yes, I think so.” That, apparently, was that. All done.
“In that case,” Raffen said, “we might as well get on with it. Who do I take my orders from?”
The man in the grey cloak said, “That would be me. Spread out your line between the end of our line and the ford, that’ll mean they can’t try and dodge across the river. Then their only option will be to try and get into the town before we can overtake them. No chance,” he added, with a hollow grin.
“Understood,” Raffen said. “If they do come our way, do you want us to just hold them, or try and push them back at you?”
“Hold them,” grey-cloak said. “We’ll be there directly.”
“No problem. I didn’t catch your name, by the way.”
“Luzir,” grey-cloak said. “Commander in chief.”
“Splendid.” Raffen smiled again, warm and cheerful. “See you after it’s over, then. Nice meeting you all.”
Tradition dictates that the Cosseilhatz follow their king into battle. “It’s all right,” Chauzida told them, “I don’t mind, so long as it’s just riding along in front. I don’t think I’d be much use in real fighting.”
Luzir called out a dozen names. “They’ll ride with you,” he said. “Well before you get within bowshot, they’ll give you a signal to slow down. The rest of the army will pass you, so you won’t come anywhere near the fighting.”
Chauzida frowned. “Isn’t that cheating?”
Luzir laughed. “Well, if it is, we’ve been cheating for a thousand years. No, that’ll be fine.”
The riders of his escort were so tall and they rode so close that Chauzida couldn’t see very much; just the tail of the horse in front and the scale-armoured back of its rider. Whoever he was, he had long black hair in a ponytail, that swung from side to side with the movement of the horse. “Don’t worry,” the man on his left said, “they won’t stick around. Soon as they see us coming, they’ll be off like rabbits.”
He was concerned in case Chauzida was scared. “Thanks,” Chauzida said, but he doubted if he’d made himself heard; they were cantering now, then galloping, and the horse they’d put him on was bigger and wider than he was used to; he had to concentrate just to stay on and not get his spine hammered up into his brain. He wished he had some armour or at least a helmet, so that if he fell off and the horses behind rode over him, maybe he’d stand a chance. He’d never ridden this fast before, but there was absolutely no way he’d be able to stop or even slow down. Maybe he’d fall off and be killed, and then Joiauz would be king, and that’d solve a lot of problems—
With a sinking feeling that briefly took his mind off the speed he was going at, he remembered that his uncle couldn’t be king now, couldn’t be allowed to be; capable and incapable of too much to be allowed to be. That was probably the moment when Chauzida realised exactly what he’d got himself into, the knowledge that here was a job that nobody else could do for him, no matter how much better than him they were, no matter how much they wanted to spare him. The moment came and passed, he rode over it and tried to fix his mind on the horse’s arse in front of him, not getting too close, not falling behind (and his whole life from now on would be more or less doing that, in one shape or form) until the signal came and he could gently sink back into the anonymous body of his people, where he really belonged.
“Nobody move,” a sergeant was yelling. “Anyobody breaks rank, I’ll fucking kill him.”
He meant it, too; and a sergeant of the regular imperial infantry is far and away the most terrifying thing in the universe, scarier than pain, mutilation, capture, torture and death. Transfixed by the threat, the line held, stayed, didn’t break, didn’t run, right up to the moment when they could see the horses’ eyes, and the strings of flashing brass bells woven into their manes. Then they turned and ran, because no force on earth could stop them.
The sergeants ran too, so their backs were to the Cosseilhatz when four hundred archers stood up out of the low pocket of dead ground that Calojan had seen on his good map and recognised as the fulcrum on which the history of the world would turn. He’d told the four hundred archers; all I need you to do is loose three shots, and after that you can do what the hell you like. Of course, from where they were they couldn’t see what was coming towards them, or they’d have run too. As it was, they stood up and loosed point-blank in one and the same movement, and their volley slammed into the front rank of the Cosseilhatz cavalry charge, and stopped them like a wall.
Only the front rank; the second, third, fourth ranks couldn’t stop, so they rode over the downed, thrashing horses and the riders pinned under them; stumbled, fell, tripped, rolled, flew, impacted and compacted to build a living-dying barricade, all in the time it took for the four hundred imperials to nock their second promised arrow. The second volley tore into the stopped crash of the charge; the fifth and sixth ranks were frantically trying to pull round, to avoid ploughing into the mash, but there wasn’t enough time or space. The third volley sailed over the tangle into the still-mounted rearmost ranks, who’d assumed they were safe. The four hundred dropped their bows and ran like hares. None of the Cosseilhatz were watching.
It had worked, as Calojan had known it would (he’d seen it, in that last backwards glance at the chessboard, when he’d finally figured out what was wrong with the picture, and what he could do if his fears were realised), but needless to say, his four hundred archers had only engaged the dead centre of the Cosseilhatz lines, a very small part of the wave. The wings swept on—they couldn’t have stopped if they’d wanted to—rushing like floodwater to engulf his tiny army and wash it away. He�
��d foreseen that as well, and given orders accordingly.
He didn’t look as his two brigades of lancers charged. It was like throwing wisps of straw into a fire; they surged forward and were immediately consumed, there would be no survivors. The question was, would they be enough to slow the enemy down just enough to let the rest of the army cover the few hundred yards to the eaves of the wood, where the Cosseilhatz wouldn’t follow?
The answer proved to be; yes and no.
Isnel, Luzir’s eldest son, took command when he saw his father die. It was purely instinctive, which was just as well. For most of his life, people had been telling Isnel that he was a disappointment, a nice enough fellow in his way but not a patch on the old man. If he’d had time to reflect on that, he’d have frozen or run away, and nobody would have slowed down the Cosseilhatz wings and drawn them back from pursuing the survivors of the imperial infantry into what was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, yet another of Butcher Calojan’s fiendishly clever traps. In so doing, they told him later, he saved countless lives, secured a victory that could so easily have slid into a disastrous defeat, probably changed the course of history.
That the enemy’s headlong flight to the woods was a trick didn’t actually occur to Isnel until much later, when they were all congratulating him; at which point his blood went cold and he became very quiet for a long time. All he’d been thinking about was the king, who’d been in the centre, where the Cosseilhatz king always rides. Isnel was commanding the left wing, a job so simple even he could be trusted with it, when the archers stood up and he saw his father flying ridiculously through the air, landing in a crumpled ball and being trampled by two horses that could neither stop nor swerve. He saw that, realised what it meant; then he thought, Oh God, the king.
As soon as he’d stopped the charge and got the line into some sort of order, he led them back to where the archers had stood up, where the appalling mess covered the ground. The idea, he knew, would have been for the king to drop back into the fourth rank just as they came into range of the enemy; but the fourth rank of the centre had melted away, like ice on a stove, when the archers loosed their third volley. He yelled, “Find the king, find the king,” until he could make them understand.
He looked at the wreckage on the ground, trying to figure out how it had happened. Enemy soldiers had literally risen up out of the ground, right under the hooves of the front rank; Calojan had stretched out his hand and crushed the best men of the Cosseilhatz, like they were dead leaves in his palm.
They found the king; he was sitting on his horse, perfectly still, boxed in on four sides by dead and dying men. When they called out, Your Majesty, are you all right, he’d just nodded. They saw how wide his eyes were, but he didn’t say a word.
Much later, they realised that there had been no men lying in ambush in the wood; they knew, because they were watching, and only the men who’d run into it came out again on the other side. Somehow, that made it much worse. They really were fighting just the one man, and he’d beaten them.
“Well,” Semplan said, at the brief, weary council they held that night, after a miserable day of killing wounded horses and burying dead men, “at least we’ve got that bastard bottled up in Moisin, where he can’t do a damned thing. That’s as good as killing him, really, if he can’t get back to the City.” Nobody said anything, so he continued, “And if you look at it in that light, we’ve done a good job today. All right, about half their infantry made it into the town, so what? We killed all their cavalry, and most of all, we’ve taken out the one man who stood between us and victory. I know he made bloody fools of us, but we’re big enough to handle that. I say we won, and the hell with it.”
Autet nodded slowly. “You’re right,” he said. “We did win. Just doesn’t feel like it, that’s all.”
Chauzida said; “Excuse me, but does anyone know where the Sanarois is? I assume it’s a river, but I’ve never heard of it.”
It turned out that nobody else had, either.
After a brief discussion, the Alliance agreed that the Selbst would stay behind and besiege Moisin, to make absolutely sure Calojan didn’t slip out and get away, while the Cosseilhatz pressed on to the City. The news of this decision was waiting for Calojan when he finally arrived at the palace. It made him laugh.
He had, of course, left his remaining men at the gates of Moisin and ridden, alone and as fast as he dared go, straight back to the City. As luck would have it, his horse had gone lame; he’d managed to trade it and his armour for a miserable, half-dead creature in the courtyard of the Integrity, the third-to-last inn on the Military road before the outer suburbs. Not that the hold-up signified, in the end. It seemed that the enemy weren’t in any hurry any more. They’d halted on the plain outside Moisin to hold funeral games for their dead; three days of feasting and athletic contests, with lavish prizes for the winners and heavy gambling on the outcomes; it was what they did when they’d taken a mauling and wanted to get rid of the misery. Over-simplistic, like everything the Aram did, but still, not a bad idea, at that.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. Then Sechimer said, “Have a drink.”
“You know what,” Calojan said, “I think I will.” He stood up and walked to the table, where the servants had put out an unopened bottle of wine and two silver goblets. Apart from the orange glow of the fire, there was no light in the chamber. “Well,” he said, “one good thing at least.”
“What?”
“At least we know now that the prophesy’s a dud.”
Sechimer looked at him. “What makes you say that?”
Calojan was trying to break the resin seal, but he couldn’t. His hands had suffered terribly from the cold on the way back from Moison. They still ached, and he didn’t have full use of his fingers. “Well,” he said, “they crossed the Essa, and were they destroyed? I don’t think so.”
“Maybe the prophesy wasn’t talking about them.”
“Ah,” Calojan said. “You think it hasn’t come true yet.”
Sechimer clicked his tongue. “Here,” he said, “give me that, you’re shaking up all the sediment.” Calojan grinned sheepishly and handed him the bottle. “No,” Sechimer went on. “I think the prophesy came true all right. I think the great enemy of all mankind is us.”
It was clear from his face that Calojan hadn’t considered that interpretation. “Fine,” he said. “But they were the ones who crossed the Essa, not us.”
“I don’t think so.” Now Sechimer was struggling with the bottle. “If you remember, the first military action was when our cavalry crossed the river on a punitive raid, and their civilians slaughtered them. So, we crossed first.”
“Sorry, you’re wrong there. The first crossing was when they went over after their stray sheep, or goats, or whatever it was. Then our cavalry—”
“I said the first military action,” Sechimer replied irritably. “The men chasing the stray goats were a civilian incursion. That doesn’t count. It wasn’t official action. We crossed first.”
Calojan held up his hands. “Fine,” he said, “if that’s how you read it. Seriously, though. Do you really see the empire as the great enemy of all mankind?”
“I’m coming round to that point of view,” Sechimer said. “After all, what do we do? I mean, how do we measure our success? By battles won, enemies overthrown, nations dominated, sucked into the empire or wiped out. I ask myself, will the world be better off without us? And the answer—” He twisted too hard and the bottle cracked. He swore and shook his hand, which was bleeding. “Wonderful,” he said. “The emperor, brother of the Invincible Sun and vice-gerent of Heaven, can’t even open a bottle without smashing it. Sort of illustrates my point, don’t you think?”
“I wasn’t actually thirsty,” Calojan said.
“I was.” Sechimer wiped his hands on the nearest fabric, which happened to be the hem of the lorus, and sat down heavily in his chair. “But I’ve been thirsty too often for my own good lately. So, how bad is it?”
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Calojan looked straight at him. “In theory,” he said, “we have six armies comprising a total of seventy thousand men.”
“In theory.”
“In theory. In fact, we have a few thousand here and there, all of them cooped up in walled cities. So far, the Cosseilhatz have shown no interest whatsoever in trying to storm anything with a wall round it; they’re scared stiff of artillery and they don’t know the first thing about siegecraft, and it’s not like our men are going to come out and attack them, so why bother?”
Sechimer was binding a handkerchief round his hand. “So what are they doing?”
“As far as we can tell, they’re grazing their sheep. And our sheep, which are now their sheep, if you follow me. There’s been no fighting, because all our people have left the countryside and scrambled into the towns. As you can imagine, that’s not a satisfactory state of affairs.”
Sechimer nodded slowly. “What can we do for them?”
“Nothing.”
There was a long silence. “You’re sure about that.”
“Absolutely sure,” Calojan said. “Right now, the forces at my disposal are the City garrison, five thousand regular infantry, six hundred lancers, and about four thousand auxiliaries; those people we picked up a while back, after they tried to raid us.”
Sechimer frowned, then said, “I remember. There was a man called Ohtar. Thought we were the Sashan.”
“That’s them. Anyway, less than ten thousand all in, and we need that many just to cover the full length of Florian’s wall. That’s it. Nothing to spare for helping anyone.”
Sechimer nodded slowly. “What about the other lot, the Selbst? What are they doing?”
“Not sure,” Calojan replied. “The king seems to have gone back home, but the best intelligence we can get is that he’s coming back with the rest of his people. They intend to settle.”